Checkmate
by Catherine Rain
Summary: Caesar and Apple debate the meaning of "family." Silverbergness ensues.
1. Checkmate

Checkmate   
by Catherine Rain   
makocrystal@hotmail.com

  
            Apple startled at a knock on the door. She lowered the papers she had been looking at, steeling herself to look as though she had not been upset about anything. She was not in a mood to let her past interfere with her present. Had she let enough time lapse since the knock that her visitor would not realize he had so violently startled her from a reverie? Probably so. "Come in."  
            The door swung wide open, wider than she would have liked, and a shaft of too-bright light pierced the dim interior of the room where Apple kept the lights low. She had been reading by the soft glow of a golden lamp, and the overpowering sunlight made her shrink back from the disheveled silhouette in the doorway. "Close the door, Caesar, please."  
            He obliged her request. "I got your message. About Toran."  
            "I'm sorry for the long detour, but would you like to come with me? I shouldn't be long, once I get there. It's a matter of some people I need to speak to."  
            "Depends. Are you going to Gregminster?"  
            She looked down at her desk. "No."  
            "Where?"  
            "Seika."  
            "Ehh…" He put one hand behind his head, scratching his fingers through his shaggy hair. "Not much to do there…"  
            Quietly she said, "I know."  
            "So can I wait here, if you don't mind…"  
            "That's fine. I just needed a decision."  
            "Okay."  
            She kept her eyes lowered, trying to wait out the silence. He would say something less embarrassing soon. Why was she so embarrassed about her town? It wasn't a defense—she knew it to be a tiny village, and had no problem with that fact. She did not view Caesar's words as criticism. No, her embarrassment was merely about secrets he could have no way of knowing; it was private and therefore pointless.  
            "You have family there, right?"  
            She caught her breath as quietly as she could manage, closed her eyes to keep from choking. "No. Not _my_ family." It had to come from him, too.  
           "Really? But you're from—"  
           "I don't have family." _Damn it, he doesn't know how much this means to me. I kept it that way because I was embarrassed. But had I told him, sensitivity would have been an option for him. Maybe I should have told._  
           He was quiet then, probably mistaking the cause of her embarrassment. It was not her own family she wanted to keep quiet about.  
           "I'm sorry," he said. "Your—Sheena is in Gregminster, isn't he. I didn't mean…"  
           "That has nothing to do with it. I just need to go to Seika. …It's only research." She looked up at him, and gave him a casual smile.  
            "So it's _my_ family you're looking upset over."  
            _Thanks, kid._ "That's the blunt way to put it, yes."  
            "I see." He furrowed his brow in thought.  
            She watched him, his hair glinting brown and red from the warm lamplight. At this angle, he really did resemble the pictures of Odessa_. Of all the people in the world, _she thought, _save for just one, it would distress me the most to see this resemblance._ But these thoughts were of long ago. Hadn't she just told herself not to let the past interfere with the present?  
            "I'm not sure I have family, either," said Caesar slowly.  
            She let the sheaf of paper she had been tensely clutching slide from her hand as she melted into sympathy. "Oh, Caesar, you do… you do, you just don't realize it now…"  
            "Do I?" he said, visibly distressed.  
            "Yes. Yes, you do." Visions of the past crowded unbidden into her mind, analogies in the shape of memories, long-worn and fuzzy around the edges but well-cared for, the familiar chorus at the back of her life. "I've never known two of you Silverbergs to agree on your principles but once, and one of you never lived to know it." _And dear child, you look just like her. _  
            "If you're talking about Odessa… but… didn't she refuse even until her death to acknowledge her brother?"  
            "Yes. And if she had, they might have been reunited," she said pointedly.  
            "So what are you implying? That I should go get involved in a power struggle in Harmonia? That'll make me happy?" His face darkened.  
            "No." She sighed. "No, listen, and calm down. I only mean that you need to remember that he is your brother. You may disagree, but he will always be your Albert… so, if you want to see him again at the end of the long course you each must take…"  
            "Pulled along by the winds of fate, the caprices of destiny, the malevolence of history, et cetera, yeah." He was completely scowling now. "Did you learn that in the Dunan war? _I_ learned about it with clear hindsight and _I_ learned that it was unnecessary."  
            "Unnec—" She froze. He had caught her in a fault. "You're right about that. It did become unnecessary, I know." She wasn't sure whether to feel bad about her own inattention to that personal belief, or whether to leap up from the desk and hug him and thank him for being the proper kind of Silverberg. Albert was right about him—Leon would not have agreed, and that, so far as Apple was concerned, was a compliment.  
            "You're just content to let us drift apart, you see what you're saying? To just let things come between us like it's nothing. Well, it's not nothing. We weren't always mad at each other, and for all I knew, we were going to grow up being not mad at each other and being the siblings that got along, and we made a promise, and…"  
            The Dunan war had been a good analogy, she could see. "All right. I don't mean it's _good_ for you to drift apart." Forget forgetting the past; it was the only way to make sense out of the present. "But this is the way it always ends up working out. Who's the expert on your family, okay, me or you?"  
            He cracked a smirk. "You think it's you?"  
            "Do you really want me to answer that question?"  
            "Single combat, Apple. I'll prove myself and show no mercy."  
            "All right," she said, laughing. "I've been breaking all my rules all day. You really threw me off course when you came in earlier. I can let you be the expert for one day."  
            "Let me? Hey, it's _my_ family."  
            "I know." She sobered. And that should not be a big deal, of course. The Silverbergs were not the only gifted people in this world, merely the most notorious.  
            "It really is a big deal to you, isn't it?" He peered at her with interest, as though he could read the answer on her face. It was not foolishness; despite her efforts, occasionally he could.  
            What the hell, she'd broken all her other rules; it was time to throw away the book. "Yes, it is."  
            "Why?"  
            There were too many answers. Why would she give anything to be one of them? Because they were so brilliant, because she always felt that she was tagging behind? Or because she felt connected to them in a natural way, fitting in the way she had with few other groups of people? Because her life always recurred towards them? Because they had never betrayed her? Or for another reason?  
            "The one person I looked up to," she said quietly, "ever, the one person that I felt and still feel was unequivocally good… the one person I would follow without question, who had the answers to questions I didn't even know how to ask, who saw truths I could never clearly see… my one role model, was your cousin." She straightened some of the papers on her desk, keeping her hands busy and her eyes away from her student. "That's why I have to do this. The single happiest time of my life was in Seika, and I don't care what else is or is not there. I had a guiding light. And I thought, once, that I could become just like him… but that was a dream. I can never become what he is. All I can do is try as hard as I can to sort out the facts… to show people what he was, and why…"  
            "You're really obsessed, aren't you?"  
            She blushed. "Yes. I won't deny it."  
            "It's all right. I guess your job is to know all about him anyway, so it's a good thing. But, you know… I'd trade with you. I'd let you be a Silverberg and deal with the crazy strife. I just want a family that treats me as a person, that won't hate me over ideology…"  
            "You'd rather have a family that betrays you personally?"  
            "I didn't say that!" He had the grace to look extremely embarrassed.  
            She was not hasty to reassure him, nor did she sink into pain; she had said it for the purpose of alarming him, not of thinking about it, and so allowed herself to say only, "My point, and I think you may even see it now, is that you have something that will not leave you, because of who and what you are. Even if you are separated, you are still family. You are too famous to lose track of each other, no matter how little you contact each other."  
            He nodded, calm now, looking lost in thought.  
            Good, she'd helped him, at relatively small personal expense, and could close the subject. Heaven forbid that she would actually put herself through excessive emotional trauma to help him. No, that would have been selfless. She shoved away the self-criticism in the back of her mind, but lightly, trying not to bruise it because she knew it was an old keepsake from Mathiu. It was a valid point. Caesar was the one who mattered in this conversation, not herself. "Feeling any better?"  
            "Yeah…"  
            "So." She lifted the quill pen from its stand. "You're staying, and I'm practically ready, so I'll be leaving for Toran tomorrow. I'll find you here when I get back?"  
            "Yeah. …Hey, Apple?" he said, stepping back in the direction of the door.  
            "Yes?"  
            "You really believe that about not losing your family?"  
            "Yes. I think so." She thought again of Mathiu's sorrow when he discovered that Odessa had not forgiven him at her death. "I do."  
            "You'd live up to it, and make yourself happier?"  
            "I try to live by all my philosophy when I can, yes."  
            He nodded languidly. "Do enjoy yourself in Gregminster."  
            She leapt up from her chair, slammed her hand down on the desk, and shouted at his retreating back in the shaft of light. "I TOLD YOU, I DON'T HAVE FAMILY!"

  


~ fin ~


	2. Checkmate: a retrospective

It's been about five years since I wrote this fic. In that time, I've had various people say that they don't get it, or that they're not sure who won. I thought at first that there was no point explaining, because much of the joy in a complex story (for me, anyway) is ferreting out the meaning for oneself. But part of the reason I write fanfic is to communicate ideas about the characters, and if people don't get the meaning of the fanfic, then it's lost on them. I've been replaying Suikoden III lately, and although it might be an author's little self-indulgence, I still want to explain my ideas.

Who won the argument? --Caesar, without a doubt. He's caught Apple in a contradiction. Earlier on, she's told him that if someone was once so close to you as to be family, then that still means something and it's not a matter you can just discard and ignore. However, she is insistent that she doesn't have family, although she has an ex-husband (presumed here to be Sheena) that she seems to be writing out of her life completely. Caesar has pointed out the contradiction-- that she's writing off her ex-husband while simultaneously insisting that no one can write off their family. He insinuates that if she believes as she does, she'll have to go to Gregminster to see her ex-husband, from which derives the punning title of the fic. When she realises the double-standard she's setting, she's embarrassed and defensive, but all she can do is shout ineffectively because she's already lost.

To me, this is notable because it shows that through the years between Suikoden II and Suikoden III, Apple has grown beyond her lack of confidence into a person who is willing to stand her ground in an argument. She's willing to give social advice, to assert herself as Caesar's elder, and to pass judgment on her ex-husband as being someone she doesn't want in her life. She's confident enough that when she loses an argument, she's surprised and a bit put out, rather than crushed. Yet she does know when she's lost; she's not smugly deluding herself that Caesar doesn't understand, but rather accepting that, frustrating though it may be, he's got a point.

Caesar, by contrast, is the same as we've always seen him act in the game: casual and cool. Caesar-from-the-game and Caesar-from-the-manga seem like two entirely different people to me, and I can't imagine manga!Caesar taunting Apple, even with good will-- he's too earnest for that. But game!Caesar seems to relate in just that way: he's laid-back and teases her about being a bookworm. He hasn't had much opportunity to change since then, so it's Apple who is the most striking in this fic.

Anyway, I hope that this explanation clears things up a bit. I've received various comments on this fic over the years, and I get excited over every one. I'm just glad that people are enjoying it and thinking more about the characters in new ways. These characters are always important to me; even though it's been a long time since I wrote the fic, the fire still burns.

Thanks for reading, and I wish you well on your journeys.


End file.
